Respecting People Online and Offline

Respecting – esteem for or a sense of the worth or excellence of a person, a personal quality or ability, or something considered as a manifestation of a personal quality or ability: I have great respect for her judgment. Source: Dictionary.com

Basically, you have concern for another person. As our society races along and people are becoming less social, (more active online, less networking and talk among co-workers and clients) you can feel a change in respect.

All people need to feel respected. In April, I had seen a famous Online Marketer, I thought her presentation was awesome. I sent her a quick thank you on Linkedin and wondered offered an invitation to connect with her. Just this week, I received a response from this individual thanking me for my comments, but never acknowledging my request to connect.

At a recent networking event, I noticed some new people and invited them to sit at our table, after formal introductions, this person buried himself in his smartphone and did not say another word. This person would have been better off at a table of one then to sit with others and talk to people through his phone.

If you are trying to connect online, make sure you keep in contact with people and pay them respect from time to time.

One more point:

If you have over 20,000 people you follow on Twitter or over 1,000 fans on Facebook, do yourself and others a favor and get your list down. Do you really respect all of these people? Seriously? I know, I used to follow this many people on Twitter and Facebook respectively. I respected numbers more than people and got me nowhere. Since I follow fewer people now, I can show much more respect and actually show that I do care about people and the information they share.

Finally:

If you have respect, you also have some humility. Show people respect and you instantly gain more contacts. The benefit that these contacts bring is they will also serve as advocates and witnesses to you and what you stand for.

Comments

You are absolutely right! Unfortunately, this topic crosses all disciplines. I guess the best thing we can do is recognize it and tactfully point it out so people are aware of it. Thanks again for your comment.

How sad, but true your words are. My background isn’t in marketing, though the same issues apply across disciplines.
As a fully qualified and experienced clinician, I was horrified by the lack of humility being shown by newly qualified practitioners. Their attitude and expectations gave the impression that they felt the world, the service in which we worked and even their clients owed them in some way – presumably because of their Doctoral status and commensurate high rates of pay. And this was reflected in many ways when with other professionals, clients and their families.

I don’t know if it’s a generational thing, but in my books it was most certainly unacceptable.